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TORONTO -- To those of us not in daily contact with Jon Cornish, the story in the paper seemed to have a misprint. It was a reference to his mother, Margaret, an Anglican priest, travelling in Jerusalem with her wife.

It's all right, the Calgary Stampeders running back said Thursday. He made the same mistake the first time his mom told him she had met someone.

"What's he like?" Cornish said, home for Christmas from the University of Kansas, sensing her excitement.

"Well, it's a she," said his mom.

Cornish, bless his free-spirited heart, told this story after practice, to a roomful of reporters at Rogers Centre, and you could have heard a pin drop. He was remembering his own reaction to the news that his mother was gay.

"It took like 15 seconds to process, and then I was like, 'OK, that's pretty cool.' And that was it," he said.

"I would say most people are surprised, because normally you wouldn't associate lesbian with having kids, but no, (people) seem pretty accepting of it, especially after they meet them."

And his father?

"My father passed away when I was in college, and I never knew him," said the 28-year-old from New Westminster. "But I am thankful for him -- he gave me some good genetic code."

Cornish, who ran for a league-leading 1,457 yard this season and broke Normie Kwong's 56-year-old record for rushing yards by a Canadian, didn't win the Gibson's Finest CFL award for most outstanding player Thursday night -- Toronto Argonauts' record-breaking triple-threat Chad Owens won it -- but he did get the prize as the league's top Canadian.

As importantly, perhaps, he gained something only his forthrightness in the national spotlight could have won him: a seat at the head table of the You Can Play movement, which is gathering steam and still awaits the day an active player in one of North America's four major professional sports comes out.

Stampeders head coach John Hufnagel was asked how accepting he thinks his club would be of an openly gay athlete.

"Can he throw?" said Hufnagel. "Can he catch? Is he fast? It's a free country."

But that's an oversimplification of a much more complicated matter, and Cornish is aware that there is even a battle still to be fought to keep the homophobic reflex out of the locker-room.

"I'm actually pretty outspoken. I don't like certain slurs being used, and any time I hear them, I speak up," he said. "I think for the most part, my team's pretty respectful. We have a lot of smart people on this team.

"People are always surprised when I tell them about my mom's situation, but for me, it's something I'm proud of. Because she'd been through a lot, and she finally found someone who she loved, and for me, there's nothing more positive in the world."

Margaret Cornish raised five children by herself on a music teacher's salary, he said, and got them into private schools -- Cornish went to St. Thomas More Collegiate in Burnaby for the football program; his siblings were in French immersion -- "but when we were all done, she decided to go back to school, and got her Masters of Ethics, and became a priest in the Anglican Church," he said. "So that's what she wanted to achieve, and for me that's been a motivation my whole life."

Cornish himself is nothing if not a constant revelation. He's as unpredictable in an interview as he is on the field, where his ability to bowl over tacklers, shed others and weave his way through traffic made him the first Canadian to lead the league in rushing since Ottawa's Orville Lee in 1988. Like Andrew Harris in B.C., he's a threat every time he gets his hands on the ball.

His mooning of the crowd in Regina during a loss to the Roughriders this year was deeply embarrassing but "I would say that I let out all my immaturity that I had left in that moment," he said Thursday. "It was like, 'OK, that's it.'"

"He's a good football player, and a smart guy," said offensive coordinator Dave Dickenson. "He's not that different from most people. Everybody has their own little thing ... Jon, to me, is very coachable, very detailed -- he's a little bit inquisitive, but I don't think that's really a negative.

"If he wants to know why we're doing something, I should have an answer to those questions. I don't want to say, 'Just because.'

"He reads holes really well. He's patient, and when he sees it, he hits it. Maybe like a Shaun Alexander when I played with the Seahawks, but I think Jon's got more explosiveness."

The top Canadian award -- referred to, at times in its history, as the Tallest Midget -- can hardly be called that this year, with both Cornish and Montreal middle linebacker Shea Emry (defensive player, Canadian) double nominees for major awards. Emry lost the defensive vote to Edmonton linebacker J.C. Sherritt.

But playing a Canadian like Cornish at a skill position traditionally manned by an import does require some managing, as it has with Harris.

"When I first got up to the CFL, I thought it would be a positive. So when I came up, I was a little bit surprised to find that me being a Canadian didn't really matter," Cornish said. "In fact, because I would need a Canadian backup, that created more problems. So I ended up thinking it wasn't the best thing. But now that I am a starter and we've got an extra American wide receiver on the field, Mo Price, it's a pretty big positive."

"I honestly think there's certain guys at certain positions that it didn't matter what they are -- Brent Johnson, Jason Clermont, they're just as good as anyone, American or Canadian," Dickenson said. "I don't know if tailback is always going to be that way, but it certainly is right now."

Cornish lost the outstanding player vote by a 41-16 margin to Owens, not a terribly big surprise -- nothing like Calgary's Henry Burris losing to Montreal's Anthony Calvillo in 2008, and vowing revenge (and getting it) in the Grey Cup game.

"I think players will use whatever ammunition they can to get motivated," said Hufnagel, "and that was a small motivational piece to that puzzle, that year."

Will it be for Jon Cornish, who has been held to under 50 yards by the Argos in two meetings this year, both Calgary losses?

"I would say there's a significant chance it'll be better than 50 yards on Sunday," he said. "If it's less than 50, I'd be really disappointed."

Thursday, there was nothing to be disappointed about. Nothing important.

Earlier in the day, after worrying they wouldn't get here because the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv had been closed during bombings in Israel, Margaret Cornish and her wife Andrea Mann arrived in Toronto to hear him say:

"I want to thank my mom -- my two moms, really. Because what are we without our families?"

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